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by Dr. Leon James

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Men Drivers, Women Drivers

The following excerpts are from the book: 
Road Rage and Aggressive Driving (2000) by Leon James and Diane Nahl

        From Chapter 2

  The Gender Effect in Driving Style 

The cultural component of aggressive driving also shows when comparing men and women drivers. One of the items in our Web-based Road Rage Survey asked the 2,000 respondents how often they experience certain emotions behind the wheel, on a scale of 1 (never) to 10 (quite regularly).¹¹ In the results for men and women we found differences in certain behaviors and similarities in others. The response confirms that when it comes to feeling negative emotions behind the wheel--rage, impatience, danger, violence, competition--men experience them more frequently than women. It's the opposite for feeling compassion for other drivers: women report positive emotions while driving more often than men do. These emotional differences between men and women carry over to specific aggressive driving behaviors:

 For each aggressive driving behavior, more men report doing it than women. The differences in percentage points are statistically significant for all of these items. Though percentages look close, this means that in any sample more men than women will report aggressive behavior. These results confirm what earlier surveys have found:  Men drive more aggressively than women and manifest road rage symptoms more routinely. However, a growing number of women engage in each aggressive driving behavior:

Over the last 20 years, the number of fatal traffic accidents involving women drivers is up 18 percent, and women are involved in a higher rate of non-fatal accidents than men. Though men are still more likely to be involved in aggressive driving accidents than women, the number of women involved in these incidents is on the rise.¹²
Woman Motorist, 1999 issue, www.womanmotorist.com/sfty/female-roadrage.shtml 

The greater aggressiveness of men and the increasing aggressiveness of women drivers are cultural trends reflecting a rise in permissiveness towards expressing anger. Some of the increase in women's aggressive driving is attributed to the growth in the number of women in the workplace. The proportion of women in the driver population rose from 43 percent in 1963 to 50 percent in 1999, amounting to 88 million licensed women drivers in the U.S. More women are stuck in congested traffic, experiencing the stress and frustration men have endured. Additionally, women have more stops to make while they cart children to school, sports, and lessons, as well as driving to work, running errands, shopping and banking. A 1998 Johns Hopkins University study surveyed a group of female telecommunications workers, and found that the majority (56 percent) confessed to driving aggressively at times during their commute, yelling or gesturing at other drivers (41 percent), and taking their frustrations out behind the wheel (25 percent).¹³ OnHealth Magazine Online, http://onhealth.com/ch1/briefs/reuters/item,37992.asp

The most important factor linked to road rage in this group of women was a high level of home responsibility coupled with a low level of emotional support for their hard work. Women are often forced to drive under time pressure during congestion. As a result, auto insurance rates for young women are now close to inexperienced young men, who are still being charged 18 percent above the base rate.

From Chapter 5

Road Rage Among Women

To help you see these steps, we analyzed a road rage feud that involved two aggressive women drivers whose mutual provocations ended in tragedy.³ We reconstructed this incident in 10 road rage steps with accompanying emotional intelligence choice points.

The 1997 trial took place in Cincinnati. The jury found the woman driver guilty of both aggravated vehicular homicide and aggravated vehicular assault, and the young mother was sentenced to an 18 month prison term.²

(See also the analysis of this incident in my congressional testimony)

        From Chapter 9

  Older Drivers Men, Women 

Driving elderly requires new adjustments that challenge personal philosophy and ideology. For instance, night vision loss for some drivers is due to glare, and this does not necessarily affect their day vision. Scheduling driving times to avoid night driving, and possibly rush-hour traffic and bad weather is a good coping strategy that preserves driving freedom and maximizes safety. Automotive sociologist J. Peter Rothe has interviewed many elderly drivers and listened to them in focus groups. These conversations reveal concerns senior motorists have about themselves and concerns others have about them.²¹

1.      Insufficient self-confidence due to inexperience ("After my husband passed away, everything was pushed on me.")

2.      Anxiety due to decline in ability ("I'm sometimes a bit nervous on the blind side on my right when I'm in the left hand lane. The only way I can see is to turn my head and take a look.")

3.      Resentment due to social ostracism ("They think older drivers are worse and should stop driving.")

4.      Hostile behavior addressed to older drivers which they find degrading ("One time one of the ladies yelled at me in the parking lot, 'You’ve got all day but I haven't.' I guess what she thinks is we're just a bunch of old fogies.")

5.      Lack of awareness of how family members see them as drivers, and disbelief when told of their criticisms.

6.      Inability to see their slowness as others experience it, equating slowness with caution and patience.

7.      Increased difficulty in certain vehicle maneuvers such as parallel parking ("The curb disappears from your rear view mirror before you're really close so I have to kind of guess how far I am."

8.      The distressing experience of information overload on multilane super-highways ("Cars are coming and going on either side and it's taken me a long time to learn to keep in my lane, to signal, to look before I get into that other lane.")

9.      The experience of fatigue during extended driving hours on highways  ("They just go on for miles and miles and there is no stimulation. It puts you to sleep.")

10.  Frustration with signs whose letters aren't big enough or are too similar to each other, and other vision problems ("Driving would be easier if there were more lines, reflectors, and larger signs placed in the center, not on the side.")

11.  Being very fearful of hitting a pedestrian ("Pedestrian crossings should be better marked and lit.")

12.  Coping with disabling diseases or injuries like arthritis, loss of vision, and other health problems. ("I just hope my health stays well enough so I can drive for a long time.")

13.  The dread of crashing or getting into a collision ("I worry about someone going through a stop light, especially late at night with drunks."

14.  Rigidifying driving style due to a preoccupation with taking great precautions ("You don't take chances you did sixty years ago.  When a car comes too fast to a stop I just wait until he stops, until I'm sure.")

15.  Strong anxiety about being tailgated, seeing it as an infringement and an attack. ("It's a selfish invasion of my rights."

16.  Refusing to concede that the left lane is not a cruising lane ("I'm already driving the speed limit so I don't need to drive faster. It's my right")

17.  Experiencing greater difficulty in talking while driving ("My friend was talking but I tried not to talk because it could have distracted me.")

18.  Lapsing into daydreaming episodes ("Somehow I had missed the stop sign there.  I didn't see it.")

New drivers who are elderly and female have a double handicap to overcome in the eyes of society and the motorists on the road. They need to learn how to manage people's hostility toward both older drivers and female drivers. They especially need to learn to monitor their driving in relation to other motorists. Every stretch of road has regular users who develop "local norms" about how people should drive in that area. Anyone who drives differently violates their expectations, arouses ire, and is treated aggressively and with hostility by regulars. This hostile treatment adds to the stress and confusion of the novice elderly driver.

Many widows over the age of 65 never learned how to drive a car. Their husbands were the drivers, and when their husbands passed on, they had to become more independent, doing a lot of walking and learning how to take buses and subways. After speaking to many widows over 65, most of them agreed that they did not learn to drive because their husbands didn't encourage them and/or they were very afraid of driving. Obviously, nowadays, women are not as afraid of driving anymore. (A correspondent, July 1999)

Since this is a cultural practice in certain layers of society, many 65+-year-old widows whose husbands have passed on, or who are no longer able to drive, find themselves in a predicament created by societal values. Besides understanding safety principles, these women need driver education that includes a driving psychology component to learn how to cope with the interactive nature of the highway environment, which can be aggressive, hostile, and overwhelming.

A common bitter complaint motorists voice about older drivers is that they travel at speed limit in the passing lane and refuse to move over into the slower lane. This blocking behavior causes a flurry of dangerous activity around them as drivers angrily scramble to pass them in the right lane. New drivers who are older need training to remain alert to this problem of cruising in the passing lane, and how to monitor and facilitate the activity of vehicles around them. This is a special concern for older drivers because reaction time tends to slow with age. Older drivers typically take longer to get going at traffic lights and intersections, to make turns, or to park. What older drivers call "being patient" others around them call "obnoxiously slow." Since the number of older drivers will increase dramatically over the next two decades, there is a critical need for age groups to better understand each other, and this requires developing a greater tolerance for diversity.

The increasing age of American drivers is a serious national concern. Everyone agrees that drivers need additional skills to compensate for the decreased abilities due to aging. People 65 years and older represent 13 percent of the population and 17 percent of all motor vehicle deaths. The aging process reduces the driver's ability to deal with traffic incidents both physically and mentally, and increases the seriousness of injuries. Elderly drivers are more likely to receive citations for failing to yield, improper turns, and running red lights and stop signs. AARP, the largest association of older Americans, opposes licensing restrictions and testing of elderly drivers, citing age discrimination. This powerful lobby group argues that restrictions should be based solely on driving ability and not age, and a program of universal testing for 177 million licensed individuals in the U.S. is not considered practical.

Several organizations, have developed special training courses for older drivers. The American Automobile Association (AAA), AARP, and the National Safety Council offer refresher courses for seniors. Illinois requires a driver re-examination every three years for those over age 75 and Louisiana requires that drivers age 60 and over obtain a physical examination. Several states require re-examination if a driver is determined to be unsafe or mentally or physically unfit. However, there is no known reliable test that predicts how well a driver will operate a motor vehicle. Recent research with driving simulators is promising because the program varies light conditions as well as the dynamics of driving situations. We recommend that new drivers who are elderly participate in QDCs. Older women drivers can benefit from these group interactions that can provide support and motivation to continue to develop their driving skills.

Older drivers have two things going for them. First, driving experience accumulates with age, and since driving is a complicated bundle of skills, being more experienced is an advantage. For example, older drivers excel in the skill of assessing risk, while young, inexperienced drivers do not, so collision rates for youth are three times higher than rates for older, more experienced drivers. Consequently, insurance costs are higher for young drivers, and they have more traffic citations and license suspensions. Older drivers think more critically behind the wheel than younger drivers. Second, older drivers manage their emotions and impulses better than younger drivers.

The results from our 1999 Internet survey in show marked differences:²²

The majority of young drivers swear and speed. Young men outdo older drivers in flipping the bird, while young women are either too scared or more compassionate. Tailgating, dangerous lane hopping. and running red, are far less common among older drivers. Other driving behaviors that decrease with age and experience include, "Enjoying fantasies of violence", "Experiencing rage while driving" and "Feeling impatient" ,"Feeling hostile" or "Feeling road rage". Older drivers "feel more compassion" behind the wheel. But when asked, "How do you rate your aggressiveness as a driver?", young drivers chose 6 and older drivers selected 5. Not much difference! When asked how much stress they experience daily as a driver, the picture is reversed:  33 percent of younger drivers pick 5 or above, while 50 percent of older drivers experience higher stress. Driving stress thus increases with age, and there are both medical and psychological consequences to consider. Medically, stress kills by weakening immune system functioning and raising the concentration of potentially harmful chemicals in the blood. If one in two older drivers experience high stress while driving, a certain percentage of them will suffer medically unless they learn to manage driving stress. Psychologically, stress is a depressant. People tend to be more pessimistic when in a depressed state, they're less happy and contribute to the unhappiness of others. It makes sense for older drivers to use their experience and maturity to practice stress management skills while driving.

See also:  DrDriving's Page for Elderly Drivers  || 

The above excerpts are from the book: 
Road Rage and Aggressive Driving (2000) by Leon James and Diane Nahl

   Relationships are like Cars  

by Rita Watson

(...)

Whether or not a man plans to buy a new car is irrelevant. The articles cover specifics. A man knows that what he reads, sees, test drives, and eventually buys is what he gets. When something goes wrong, he has the repair manual and a maintenance schedule.

Relationships are not that clear-cut. Men so often say, “After we were married, something changed, mostly our sex life.” I would like to believe that as women we are not leopards changing our spots. Yet even Boston Legal featured Denny Crane learning that his fifth wife was planning on retiring him to Hawaii minutes after saying, “I do.”

It would be ideal if the sexes could talk about expectations and perceptions. But it doesn’t happen that way. Perhaps men are just “wired” differently than women. When a man comes home from work, a woman may ask with sincerity, “How was your day?” But he doesn’t want to talk about it. Many women in offices are disillusioned with the workforce. Yet, they bring the office home with them and want to talk about conflicts, confrontations, and demands.

Chances are he doesn’t want to hear about it, at least not immediately. Then the accusation comes at him: “You never talk to me.”

As we shift into a 24/7 Blackberry, laptop and two-paycheck society, there are too many couples on overdrive moving into the passive-aggressive or snipe-at-each-other lane.

When a car shows signs of stress, or needs a tune-up, men handle it immediately. There is a problem and men fix it. In a relationship, who is responsible for the tune up? Perhaps women should take the lead. Although men today are more involved in parenting and family than our fathers were, women have that sixth sense. Research at Yale indicates that women have so keen an intuition that they sense a relationship problem at its inception.

If men and women could develop their intuitive skills and interpret the silences, downcast eyes, uncomfortable moments and body language, perhaps more relationships could be saved. Or should women be using their gift to cultivate non-judgmental spaces within the home? In an atmosphere with no hidden agendas, just simple clarity, both parties would benefit.

When home is a sanctuary, men might find saying, “Can we talk?” is as easy as test driving a car.

Rita Watson, a Providence-based writer, is senior editor for a nonprofit health organization.

From:  http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_watson20_08-20-07_KN6LI51.5393ce.html

    in cars -- relationships begin, grow stronger, end

From: http://www.cartest.ca/why_do_people_name_their_car.htm

Why do people name their cars?

Driving Miss Daisy, or Jimmy, or Foo Foo

(...) And even though cars are mass-produced, we personalize our cars with familiar smells, sounds and stuff like the picture of the kids taped to the dashboard or the tassel from graduation that hangs from the rear view mirror.

“I think that many of us spend a lot of time with our cars, not just driving/riding in them, but keeping them running, and counting on them to get us places,” said Ed Liebow, senior research scientist and associate director at Battelle's Center for Public Health Research in Seattle. “Many important things happen to some of us in cars -- relationships begin, grow stronger, end -- we listen to the radio or sound system and associate what we hear with powerful emotions. In short, our cars are not just utilitarian appliances. They occupy meaningful places in our lives. And despite being mass produced, they are individualized.”

Story courtesy Ford Motor Company eNews, posted Oct. 5, 2006

   Marriage and Buying a Car

From:  http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=4296

Marriage and Cars

By Glenn Swanson
July 22, 2007

(photo location: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=4296 )
 

(...)

Not to stereotype, but many a husband wants more car than the couple can afford (without sacrificing that big screen TV), while plenty of wives wants a cute car with less power than a lawn mower (without sacrificing new carpets and curtains). In other words, men are from Mopar, women are from… some planet where the color of a car is more important than the vehicle underneath the paint job.

Unless you’re a perfectly compatible couple, such deliberations ultimately boil down to a simple power struggle— one of many that all couples face over years/months of marriage.

Usually, couples hammer out some kind of compromise. The guy gets the car he wants, or the woman gets the car she wants, and then one, the other or both live with simmering resentment.

Thankfully, the rise of the two income family has removed a great deal of the animus from the process– which is a bit like saying nuclear weapons have made the world a safer place. But then couples argue over money more than anything else. Cars are a couple’s second largest purchase after their home. Do the math. And then duck.

(...)

After many a skirmish, I’ve come to appreciate the resolute focus my “spousal unit” has placed upon saving for the future. It took a long time, but I now understand why she thinks fast cars are a needless extravagance. Or, if you prefer, I look at homeless people of a certain age and wonder which Ferrari they used to own before cocaine turned to whiskey turned to malt liquor.

(...)

That’s not to say there is no joy in Mudville. If you both agree there’s room for a new toy in the budget, providing there actually is, life can be sweet. You can go out and enjoy the fruits of your (joint) labor. OK, you’ll probably be so old by then that you no longer have the eyesight and hand-eye coordination to fully enjoy your fire-breathing SRT-8mobile or MX-5 whippet. But financially speaking, you won’t be the loser you look like.

(...)

From: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=4296

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